How to Split List Elements in Python

Question

I have a list below. I want to split like:

['Animation','Children's','Comedy','Adventure',"Children's",'Fantasy','Comedy','Romance','Comedy','Drama']

clist = ["Animation|Children's|Comedy",

"Adventure|Children's|Fantasy",

'Comedy|Romance',

'Comedy|Drama']

 

for i,x in enumerate(clist):

    if '|' in x:

        clist[i] = x[:x.index('|')]

it return this:

['Animation', 'Adventure', 'Comedy', 'Comedy']

Does this answer your question? [How can I split a string inside of a list and flatten the sub-strings list?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41700349/how-can-i-split-a-string-inside-of-a-list-and-flatten-the-sub-strings-list) — Georgy, Dec 14 '20 at 13:24

Samwise · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-12T20:16:08.720

5

I recommend using split in a comprehension if you want to produce the same result:

>>> [c.split("|")[0] for c in clist]
['Animation', 'Adventure', 'Comedy', 'Comedy']

If you want all of the individual list elements instead of just the first one, flattened into a single list, that'd be just one more nested comprehension:

>>> [g for c in clist for g in c.split("|")]
['Animation', "Children's", 'Comedy', 'Adventure', "Children's", 'Fantasy', 'Comedy', 'Romance', 'Comedy', 'Drama']

edited Dec 12 '20 at 20:16

answered Dec 12 '20 at 20:14

Samwise

68,105
3
30
44

Yes, right it works but it returns just unique values, I want to see all elements. – user14800447 Dec 12 '20 at 20:18
If you're only getting unique values, make sure you're using `[]` and not `{}`... – Samwise Dec 12 '20 at 20:32

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '20 at 20:16

There are a number of ways of doing this in Python, but one way would be using a list comprehension, like this:

clist = [genre for glist in clist for genre in glist.split('|')]

This will set clist to ['Animation','Children's','Comedy','Adventure',"Children's",'Fantasy','Comedy','Romance','Comedy','Drama'].

To explain what this is actually doing, it loops through clist, assigning each element to the glist variable, then splits glist at every | character, and then adds an element for each element in the resulting list.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 12 '20 at 20:16

You could take advantage of nested comprehension lists to achieve the goal:

clist = ["Animation|Children's|Comedy", "Adventure|Children's|Fantasy", 'Comedy|Romance', 'Comedy|Drama']

l = [ pipe_elem for child in clist for pipe_elem in child.split('|') ]

print(l)
# Output: ['Animation', "Children's", 'Comedy', 'Adventure', "Children's", 'Fantasy', 'Comedy', 'Romance', 'Comedy', 'Drama']

How to Split List Elements in Python

3 Answers3